What are the most luxurious dairy products on sale in the UK?

No comments

King Charles III is not alone in cutting back on dairy. “For years, I haven’t eaten meat and fish on two days a week, and I don’t eat dairy products on one day a week,” he told the BBC in 2021 when, as Prince of Wales, he discussed his eco-conscious diet

But that still leaves six days for the UK’s new monarch to get stuck in to as much milk, cheese and yoghurt as he likes. So, what sort of dairy would be fit for the new king?

When it comes to the mults, luxury lines include Waitrose No.1 Reblochon De Savoie AOP (£10.60/450g), or the Haute Fromagerie Cheese Selection Pack in Sainsbury’s (£9.15/400g) or for that matter, Lurpak Spreadable in the likes of, among others, Morrisons (£7.49/750g) [Assosia 12 September 2022].

While those sorts of prices are making hard-pressed shoppers’ eyes water (see p37 & p63), they pale in comparison with the true luxury dairy products available from specialist suppliers and retailers across the UK.

Pecorino Moliterno with Black Truffle, for sale at Artisan Italian, costs £190 for a 5.5kg wheel. That’s the equivalent of £34.55/kg.

It’s a snip compared with salted Flechard Butter at the Artisan Food Company. A 250g roll is £100.51 – or £402/kg.

For fancy milk, there’s Combe Hay Mares Milk. Produced on Cromwell Farm, Somerset, it’s horse milk that’s “naturally rich in vitamins, minerals and micronutrients”, it says. “It is also low fat, and easier to digest than cow’s milk.” Mares Milk is also “gentle on digestion and can help to reduce symptoms such as bloating, indigestion and constipation”.

A 250ml bottle costs £6.50 (or £26 per litre), making it 42 times dearer than pasteurised cows milk. Wales Online last year called it “the world’s most expensive milk”. Other websites bestow that title on Nakazawa cow milk from Japan, though at today’s rates of currency conversion, it costs slightly less (£25.64 per litre).

The milk is taken once a week at dawn, when melatonin is at its highest in the cows, the brand says. The hormone is believed to help lower anxiety and some forms of depression.

And ice cream? In 2017 Selfridges launched the £99, a punchy play on the 99. If you want true luxury these days, there’s the Black Diamond, at $800/scoop, but you’ll have to fly to Dubai.